These are the facilities that provide primary care to people regardless of their ability to pay. They’ve become an important source of care for the poor over the last four decades.

However they’ve been under increasing strain as hard times have pushed more people to seek low-cost medical services. Many have maintenance and infrastructure needs that could put out-of-work contractors back on the job.

So what about the Mission District? True, none of the $155 million for new centers will land here. But there’s good reason to believe some of the remaining $1.8 billion for community health centers in the Recovery Act will make it to the Mission’s backyard.

Mission Neighborhood Health Center, one of the country’s oldest community health centers, has already lined up $1.1 million in infrastructure projects which could potentially qualify for grants.

As Mission Loc@l reported, the health center’s location on Shotwell and 16th streets needs a patch up, involving everything from replacing half-broken air conditioners to sealing a leaky roof.

Even if not all of the projects are funded by the remaining $1.8 billion, there are other grants Mission Neighborhood can tap into.

About The Author

Noah Buhayar is print and multimedia student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He reports primarily on business topics. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, CBS’s business site BNET.com and MarketWatch. Before coming to the Bay Area, he taught a semester of high school Spanish in Hawaii, spent a year in southern Chile on a Fulbright grant, and interned with the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer’s online division.